(this article was originally published in "Trainline", Southern Pacific Historical & Technical Society, No. 55, Spring 1998, and is reproduced here with the appropriate permissions)
I grew up in San Francisco during the '40s and '50s. That was during "steam's finest hour", and on trips with our family I saw the Daylights at Salinas and cab-forwards at Dunsmuir, as well as rode the ferries to Oakland, the Northwestern Pacific to Eureka, and the Overland to Chicago.
My dad was an orthopedic surgeon whose practice included a relationship with the SP Hospital in San Francisco as a consultant and surgeon. Consequently, he knew many SP trainmen whom he had examined or treated. In 1950, he purchased a vacation house on the South Fork of the Yuba River, where the river canyon was about 1,000 feet below the double tracks of the Sacramento Division, approximately two miles east of Cisco and about ten miles east of where the City of San Francisco became snowbound two years later. We spent the summer months there, from 1950 through 1955. In that granite-walled canyon, we could hear multiple cab-forward freights slowly work their way up that part of the Hill from about Yuba Gap to Soda Springs, and just as easily hear the distinctive air pump sound of the helpers running light back to Roseville, as they passed almost above our house.
In the summer of 1951, when I was 12, Dad took a vacation to fish the Yuba. I accompanied him to Truckee one day on some errands. During the drive I watched SP movements through the familiar snow sheds, and looked for my favorite, the passage of any steam engine under the "blow hole", that vertical shaft through solid granite into the tunnel at Donner Summit. I believe he had the car's tires rotated, because Dad decided to kill some time in Truckee's "Pastime Club". When we entered, he recognized a trainman as a former patient, and their conversation turned to "my train-nut kid sure would like to ride in a cab-forward", which led to a phone call to the right old boy, and clearance to ride the next helper going west up the Hill.
We hurried across Main Street to the station, Dad introduced himself and thanked the official who had made the ride possible while a cab-forward approached from the east end; 4157 stopped and we climbed up into the cab, where we met Engineer Ivy and Fireman Watt. It seemed to me that there was a lot of room in the cab, which included a head-end brakeman's seat under a water cooler between the front windows.
The engine backed to the east, past a four unit set of "black widows" ready to head west with about 99 freight cars; the caboose was already separated, so that the cab-forward helper coupled it behind, then coupled to the last car, identifiable by its reporting marks just beyond our right front window as a PFE car. For the westbound trip, the only view ahead was that car's end; in a cab-forward helper the view was only right and left.
Engineer Ivy made the point that our "older" cab-forward didn't have as full a range of accessories as did the "newer" ones; specifically it did not have a speed indicator. During our trip, he referred to his watch to calculate our speed.
It was hot, noisy, and wonderful in the cab! The line just west of Truckee was not accessible by road. However, I had experienced every bit of it from the windows of the Overland going each way two years before. What I learned though, is that the fireman sanded the firetubes of an oil burner; and I hung out as much as anyone would allow in order to see that extra black exhaust blasted into the sky.
The best part, up to that point, was entering the snow sheds, where there was some light, much more dark, and noise! (I've been a lot of places and done a lot of things, in the 46 years since that ride, but I have never again experienced the sustained level of noise I did in that cab-forward at full throttle in a snowshed.)
Between snow sheds, I could look down to the right and see the eastern approach to Donner Pass; and I am still amazed that anyone could ever get an ox-drawn wagon up that granite slope, or that enough strong men, black powder and nitroglycerin could ever have blasted a right of way down it, around it, or through it.
We eventually did pass under the "blow hole", but I had no clue when, because the dark, noise, and that our vision was limited to the end of the PFE car ahead and the boiler backhead behind Fireman Watt, was all that this kid's senses could comprehend. The train slowed, and with the cutback of engine noise, someone noted, or I observed, that light leaks could be seen way above us. It was sunlight coming between the timbers of the snowshed at Norden. After all the time and effort of getting up the Hill, it was now time to go back to Truckee.
We uncoupled (although with the passage of years, I cannot recall how the caboose was re-coupled to that train; perhaps another reader knows how that was routinely done), and then backed through the darkness to the huge turntable inside the Norden snowshed. Dad and I got down to the ground while the cab-forward was turned, and my enduring memory of that dimly lighted scene is just how large the tender was, as it rotated into the up-close perspective. When we returned to the cab, 4157 started toward the long tunnel, rather than the Number 1 track we had traveled westbound. I had experienced that tunnel eastbound two years before, but the tunnel seemed more precipitously downgrade when seen from the cab-forward then I recalled it from the Pullman. In time, that light far away became a reality, there really was an end to the long tunnel.
With the helper returning light, Engineer Ivy invited me to sit on the front part of his seat, in order to experience our movement from the engineer's point of view. I can tell you, yes!, the view was better when leaning out his side window than straight through the front window, four feet away, which seemed like looking through a TV screen.
"This is the brake", he explained (I knew that, the streetcars in San Francisco also had break stands with two gauges, as any kid who spent each trip through the tunnel under Twin Peaks watching the gauges' needles move in concert with the motorman's left hand, ought to know.) "Here, move the brake handle, and watch the needle move". (Who, me, apply the brakes of a 4-8-8-2 going down the Eastern slope of the Sierra?) "There, did you see the needle move? Good, now apply some more brake (now!), to slow her down. That's the boy. Apply some more brake! Now you've got it." And, "Better apply some more brake (now!). WOW!
Do you know who blew the whistle and applied the brakes, going through Andover, Eder, and rest of the way to Truckee? "Better apply some more brake (now!)". And I will never forget the experience!
Approaching Truckee, we encountered a red signal and Engineer Ivy coached me through brake applications to a full stop. After a few minutes of nothing louder that the air pumps' sound, the signal aspect changed and he said, "You'd better get hold of that throttle and get us moving!" The throttle was a vertical lever suspended from the cab's ceiling (he had explained that much earlier in the day); what I learned next is that a kid needed to stand up, get both hands around that throttle, and really tug on it, in order to get a 4-8-8-2 to start moving!
Finally, it isn't enough to say that steam moves a locomotive. The full experience is that when it starts to move, a cab-forward exhausts a tremendous volume of still high pressure steam; and on that summer day in 1951, locomotive 4157 exhausted steam into the clear blue sky over the Sierra in a breathtaking succession of stack blasts. As we moved to Truckee station, the kid, who was privileged to be at the throttle, on a day, in a time, which cannot be experienced again, will treasure those moments forever.